Introductory 3 



ideas witli a firm liand, hut he leaves no room for douht as 

 to which side of the ag^es-long controversy he is on. He is 

 ahvays on the side of the organism as against its suhstance. 



Were we permitted to take this statement by Aristotle 

 out of its setting in his general doctrine of living beings it 

 would very well present, as far as it goes, the stand})oint 

 that will be maintained in the present treatise. However, 

 when we come to follow him further and find what his dis- 

 tinction is between substance and form, and to see how 

 the latter is related to the soul and becomes involved in the 

 problems of purpose and necessity, we have to recognize that 

 in reality the passage comes a long way from meaning what 

 we should mean by the same words. Wherein the difference 

 lies will appear as our enterprise develops. 



The earliest defender of the opposite idea whom we shall 

 notice was Lucretius. Although this poet-naturalist pro- 

 fessed to be a follower of Empcdocles and Epicurus, his 

 formulation of biological elementalism is so explicit and so 

 readily accessible to modern readers that it will serve well 

 the needs of this discussion. In the third book of The 

 Nature of Things Lucretius gives his reasons for rejecting 

 the Greek notion of the "mental sense" of man and animals 

 as a Harmony — a something which arises as a vital product 

 of the whole, and then defends at length the counter hypo- 

 thesis, namely that the mind and soul, that is, life, is a defi- 

 nite, independent, though complex substance. I quote a 

 few sentences from the theory which Lucretius is sure is 

 right, using the translation by the Reverend J. S. Watson: 

 "I shall now proceed to give you a demonstration, in plain 

 words, of what substance this mind is, and of what it con- 

 sists. In the first place, I say that it is extremely subtle, 

 and is formed of very minute atoms." After illustrating the 

 activity and perv^asiveness of the soul throughout the body, 

 the author continues: "It must therefore necessarilv be 

 the case, that the whole soul consists of extremely small 



